Online tool changing lives of people who stutter

Photo of person doing an online course — Photo: Adobe Stock Images

You know the word, but you can’t get it out. Maybe you get stuck on the first syllable. Maybe you get trapped in a long pause. Maybe your mouth produces sounds that you don’t mean to make.

This is what happens for people who stutter.

Stuttering is a speech fluency issue with far-reaching implications — many people who stutter will go on to experience lifelong social, educational and professional impacts. They’re also 16 times more likely to develop social anxiety.

Now, help is at hand in the form of a novel digital program from the Australian Stuttering Research Centre (ASRC) at UTS.

Called iGlebe, this free cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) tool is poised to alleviate stuttering-related anxiety.

Tailored treatments for stuttering-related social anxiety

The brainchild of UTS Professor Ross Menzies and doctoral student Fjola Helgadottir, iGlebe is designed to alleviate social anxiety in adults who stutter. It’s the first program of its kind that combines the automation of online learning with individual treatment formulation based on CBT, the gold standard treatment for anxiety.

“Our goal was to develop an automated, online AI program that could simulate the relationship between a client and a clinical psychologist in live therapy,” says Professor Menzies, a clinical psychologist at ASRC.

Clinical trials have shown that iGlebe, which was released in June 2020, eliminates diagnoses of mental illness, including social anxiety disorder, and produces outcomes equal to those achieved by senior clinical psychologists in a standard clinical setting.

In reviews of real-world uptake of online self-help interventions, the program has the highest participant completion rate of any program for anxiety, low mood or depression in the world.*.

“The iGlebe program has a lot of advantages over humans — it never tires, it delivers the same quality around the clock, it explains concepts via voice-overs on every page, and you can replay it as many times as you want,” Professor Menzies says.

The best bit? iGlebe is freely available to download around the world. Since its launch in June 2020, the program has helped 1,989 users from 44 countries save almost $4 million in direct therapy costs^.

Treating social anxiety for better speech outcomes

Eradicating social anxiety is an important step in helping people who stutter to improve their quality of life.

But there are other reasons to invest in these types of treatments, too: research shows that the presence of social anxiety has a limiting effect on stuttering treatment — that is, people who stutter and have social anxiety are unlikely to maintain the benefits that result from stuttering treatment if their anxiety is not addressed.

“If someone comes to the clinic and they say, ‘I’d really like to control my stuttering’, the first thing we want to know is whether they’re concurrently social anxious. The two treatments go hand in hand,” says Professor Mark Onslow, the Foundation Director of the ASRC.

Most developmental stuttering begins in childhood, which means there are thousands of kids out there facing the same spectre of stuttering-related social anxiety that adults do.

Luckily, the ASRC team is tackling that challenge, too: iBroadway is a digital CBT program designed to help young people who stutter to overcome their social anxiety.

It’s currently being trialled among its target cohort; the goal is to make it freely available in 2024.

iGlebe and iBroadway form part of a suite self-directed, internet-based treatment programs that are currently in development.

The other three — iWestmead, iLidcombe and iCamperdown — address the mechanics of stuttering and speech fluency for people of different age groups.

All three programs are based on existing, face-to-face treatments that are recognised internationally for delivering successful stuttering outcomes.

But if you think after 20 years and millions of dollars in funding that the ASRC team might take a moment to rest on their laurels, you’d be wrong.

If all goes according to plan, professors Onslow and Menzies and their colleagues will do themselves out of a job in the not-too-distant future:

“Six months ago, we had one of those ideas: we’ve come up with a concept for a new treatment that we think might be able to stop stuttering before it starts,” Professor Onslow says.